Synopsis | Reviews | Excerpt
Magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost is back—fighting a fire that may burn down the world.
For millennia, ancient factions of wizards have closely guarded the secrets of liquid fire—distilled from the blood of dragons and the magical key to unbelievably powerful spells.
Now, Dakota’s flirtation with a fireweaver while visiting San Francisco engulfs her in a magicial feud. Forced to defend herself with her masterwork, a powerful dragon tattoo, Dakota becomes the target of superstitious magicians who believe she’s summoned the spirit of a dragon . . . the first step in an incredibly dangerous spell that could create more liquid fire.
Soon, Dakota finds herself caught in a magical battle between ageless wizards desperate to seize the rapidly dwindling supply of liquid fire and fireweaver terrorists who’ll stop at nothing to keep every last drop of it for themselves.
Even if that means killing Dakota.
The race is on to find the truth about liquid fire, the secret behind Dakota’s magic tattoos, and the message hidden in the fireweaver’s secret codes—before the world goes up in flames.
Filled with spectacular magic, pyrotechnic action, and kinky romance, LIQUID FIRE is the action-packed third installment in the Dakota Frost, Skindancer series.
Epic Award winner Anthony Francis writes the Skindancer series while working on robots for "the Search Engine Which Starts with a 'G'."
"Liquid Fire immerses the reader into a fantastically vivid and detailed world of myth, magic and science. Francis just has a way of pulling the reader in and keeping us there to stay." -- Tometender, Tumblr.com
"Thank you to the powers-that-be for the opportunity to be one of the first readers captivated by Dakota Frost and her magical tats. Addictive, sassy, sexy, funny, intense, brilliant." —Bitten By Books, on Frost Moon
"With Blood Rock, Anthony Francis’s Skindancer series becomes one of my favorites." —Book’d Out, on Blood Rock
"A great blend of magic and science that has me wanting to read the first two books in the series!” -- Jennifer Jamieson, Netgalley
1. Fire is Life
"Fire is life,” said Jewel Grace. "That’s why I want to
summon a dragon.”
"Do... what?” I said, staring at the cute
granola chick in the aisle seat beside me as if she were a crazy person. The
gypsy-chic Bohemian had caught my eye from the start of our flight out to San
Francisco: wry, curvy, curly-haired—and, from the way she surreptitiously
checked out not just my tattoos and my Mohawk, but my breasts, a probable
lesbian—but for the first two hours, I’d no time for flirting. I’d been
preoccupied comforting my newly adopted weretiger daughter on her very first
airplane ride. After Cinnamon finally fell asleep, Jewel and I started talking,
and she’d seemed sane, until now; but who knew what bad wires lay beneath that
mass of copper curls? "I’m sorry, I thought you just said—”
"Fire is my life,” said Jewel, stretching out lithe arms,
making her intricate leather and chainmail bracers jingle—and making my eyes
follow the deft movements of her delicate hands. "I’m a professional fire
magician, and I’m traveling the world, trying to summon a dragon.”
Jewel caught me looking and smirked—but then her eyes flicked
to my bare, tattooed arms, gazing with delicious indecency at my masterwork: a
vast tribal dragon, my totem animal, a glorious, colorful, intricate tattoo
covering half my body.
Roused by her attention, the Dragon stirred to life, sliding
over my skin like magic.
No, not just likemagic; my tattoos are magic.
My name is Dakota Frost, and
I’m a Skindancer, a magical tattoo artist. My skin is a living canvas, covered
from my shaved temples to my slender toes in a network of magical marks,
powered by my beating heart, that project my intentions onto the world when I
dance.
Which makes a cramped middle
airline seat the worst possible place for six-foot-two me to lose control of a
tattoo. The Dragon is a re-inked version of my masterpiece, but it never set
right since I was forced to use it in a magical duel before the re-inking was
completed.
As I squirmed, itsquirmed, empowered by the flex of my living canvas. My control was never the
best—I quit my Skindancing training after learning to tattoo—and being crammed
into an airplane seat made it tricky to keep my unexpectedly animated Dragon
from squirming free.
As it slid over me, I became
acutely aware that the beige tube around us was shooting through the air at
seven hundred miles an hour, that beneath the dark blue carpet lay six miles of
down... and that in that duel, I’d destroyed a reception hall
with the half-finished design.
The last thing I needed was
for the full Dragon to bust out at thirty thousand feet.
"Buh,” Jewel said, staring
slack-mouthed as the tail of my dragon slid over my shoulder. She rubbed her
eyes—then held her hand over her face, peering between two fingers. "Oh. My.
God. I just said summon a dragon—and your tattoo came to life!”
I sighed. I take back what I
said: the last thing I needed was to be sitting next to a crazy magician—the
kind of woo-woo who just might decide she needed my Dragon to summon herdragon. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a crazy tried to harvest my
canvas.
I know calling that "crazy”
sounds a little harsh from someone with a living magic tattoo crawling over
her skin—but there’s magic, and then there’s ridiculous. There’s a reason they
call me the Skeptical Witch—I don’t swallow the lore of the magical world
whole.
"Sorry, Miss Grace,” I said,
pouring on my best Southern charm—which, frankly, isn’t much, because between a
dad on the Force and a mom teaching Special Ed, I ended up closer to military
brat than Southern belle. "You didn’t summon a dragon—it’s just a magic
tattoo.”
"Oh, boo,” she said, leaning,
peering at my skin. "But I’d never say just magic—”
"Fair enough,” I said, "but
still... dragons went extinct before the dinosaurs.”
"Oh, I know,” Jewel said,
eyes sparkling at me.
"Even the images of dragons
we have are a muddle,” I said, finding it hard not to smile back. "Our
movie-friendly wings and scaly image is largely from Tolkien, and our myths are
a bad jumble of folktales and distorted recollections of the creatures called
drakes—”
"Oh, I know,” she said again,
her own smile growing.
"And drakes,” I said,
"nothing against them, but they’re not really—”
"Oh, I know,” Jewel said.
"Though... I do want to see the Drake Cage while I’m here.”
That stopped me for a moment.
Drakes are some of the world’s most magical creatures, granted fire and
flight by the magical residue of dragons the same way my daughter was granted
shapeshifting by the magical residue of... well, whatever the
werekin precursor was.
Drakes might not be true
dragons, but they were spectacular.
"Me too. Missed it on my last
trip; my former girlfriend and I were... preoccupied,” I
said, proud I’d smoothly slipped in two little bits of information about my
dating availability. I lifted my shoulder slightly. "Still...
this is as close to a dragon as you’re likely to get.”
Jewel blinked, then smiled.
"Oh, don’t say that,” she said, reaching out to gently touch the Dragon as it
rippled over my skin. I felt a quiet thrill at the unexpected contact, then an
electric charge as the tip of the tail accelerated under her fingers, sliding
out of sight.
"I was going to say ‘don’t do
that,’” I said, "but I think she likes you.”
Jewel looked at me, mouth
quirking up into a pleasant wry smile. Her eyes flicked to my arm, tracing the
elaborate tattoos that were slowly shifting back into position—green tribal
vines shimmering, red roses rippling in bloom, and sparkling in the design,
tiny purple jewels.
"Good,” she said, turning
forward, smile struggling to grow broader, even as she flushed slightly
with—was that embarrassment? How cute! Then she said, "Not to diss the
spirit of your dragon, but when someone says a thing likes something,
they normally mean they like—”
"Yapping fuckers,”
barked my daughter—loud enough to make Jewel blanch. I gave Jewel a faint smile
and turned to comfort Cinnamon, who was leaning against the window, holding her
own tail, muttering, "Oh, when do—fahh!—when do we lands?”
I sighed and smiled, watching
my beautiful daughter, my beautiful weretiger daughter, my beautiful, adopted,
lycanthropic Tourette’s-challenged brainiac teenager suffering through the last
stages of an airplane flight, holding her own tail like a stuffed animal.
"It’s all right, baby,” I
said, scratching her blue bandana; she shuddered, gripping her tail tighter,
her head snapping a little in her sneezy Tourette’s tic; I was so glad that
I hadn’t let her take this trip alone. "The captain announced the landing while
you were asleep.”
"I’m sorry, Mom,” she said.
"I didn’t mean—fah!—to mess up your flirting.”
I smiled, a little
embarrassed myself now.
Cinnamon and I have the same
last name, the same silver collars, and similar magical tattoos, but there the
similarities end. I’m a smart aleck; she has Tourette’s. I’m tall, leggy, and
Mohawked; my adopted daughter is short, wiry, and crams her orange hair under a
blue bandana. I dress edgy to stand out; Cinnamon dresses like a schoolgirl to
make people overlook her twitching cat ears and flicking banded tail. I chose
my intricate tattoos to achieve a whole library of magical effects; Cinnamon’s
bold tiger tattoos were imposed on her by a backwoods graphomancer to grant
partial invisibility—which, paradoxically, makes her stand out more, since
when she’s not invisible, her tiger stripes cover her face.
I don’t want to sugarcoat it;
in modern America, where practicing magicians have talk shows and full-blooded
vampires are hits on cable TV, werekindred still get the shit end of the
stick. Cinnamon had been a street cat, warehoused, borderline abused, and I
was happy she’d let me adopt her, gratified she’d taken to school so well, and enormouslyproud my little genius won a math prize which included a trip to San
Francisco—but there was no way I’d make a vampire-collared werecat with stage
fright go through post-9/11 airport security all by herself.
Or, for that matter, let her
go into enemy territory alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I love
San Francisco, and not just because it’s a LGBT mecca. It had a warm place in
my heart from my first grownup vacation with my first childhood girlfriend,
who’d left more than a few warm spots on my bottom at the dungeon of one of its
fetish clubs. It held a new fascination for me as one of the few places in the
United States that had a dojo for my favorite martial art, the obscure Okinawan
karate called Taido. Heck, it might become a new destination for me; my
childhood friend Jinx was going to move out here when her husband Doug
graduated; they were finishing up their honeymoon in San Francisco right now.
But San Francisco was notAtlanta. It might not literally be enemy territory...
but there was no magical shield protecting San Francisco like the magical
Perimeter of Atlanta. There was no truce between vampires, werekin, and
magicians in California like the mystical Compact of Georgia. There was no
authority to prosecute rogue magicians in the Bay Area like Atlanta’s Magical
Security Council—which I myself had created and been roped into leading.
San Francisco was the magical
Wild West.
We were flying into a city
where magicians and werekin and vampires were at each other’s
throats... and I was a magician, with a weretiger daughter,
both wearing the silver collars of the Lady Saffron... the
Vampire Queen of Little Five Points.
What could possibly go wrong?
All I had to do was beat sense into a whole Conclave of truceless magicians,
werekin, and vampires who’d been at undeclared war for a century and a half.
The Wizarding Guild actually seemed interested in what I was doing with the
MSC, so, if I was lucky, they wouldn’t kill us; and, if I was very lucky, maybe
I’d collect some new allies.
With that little task out of
the way, Cinnamon would be free to collect her award—and, if I was very, verylucky, I’d be free to collect on a debt. San Francisco wasn’t
just the home of the Wizarding Guild; it was also the home of Alex Nicholson,
my contact with the Guild, a good friend who had put his life on the line for
me... and a man who owed me a million bucks.
OK, technically Alexdidn’t owe me that million; he had just inherited the leadership of the
Valentine Foundation, which owed me that million for besting its late founder
in a magical challenge he thought he couldn’t lose—and, therefore, never
thought he’d have to pay.
I closed my eyes with a sigh,
then opened them to see Cinnamon’s long bony fingers gripping the arms of the
seat. "Oh, for the love, little girl,” I said, putting my hand over hers and
rubbing it warmly—then with that hand trapped, I leaned in, free hand poking at
her huge ear. "Statistically speaking, it’s the safest—my, are you getting ear
mites again?”
"Mom!” she said, ducking away
as my finger caught the tufts of hair. Cinnamon started swatting at me with her
free hand, and as I continued to probe, she tried to get her other hand
loose—but while she had more strength, I had more leverage. "Don’t pick at it—”
And then the tires met the
tarmac, and we were down.
"Mom,” she said, as I
released her hand after one last squeeze. She half smiled, half glared, holding
her hand, ear twitching something fierce. "Meany,” she said, screwing her
knuckle in her ear; she never used the claws on anything delicate. "Big old
meany—”
"Distracted you, didn’t I?” I
said, leaning back in the seat. I heard a chuckle, and looked over to see Jewel
smiling. I smiled back, a little forced, still unsure of whether there was real
interest there or she was just an irrepressible flirt. "What?”
"Nothing,” she said, covering
her smile with her hand.
After crossing the country at
seven hundred miles an hour, the plane crossed the tarmac at a crawl. Everyone
pulled out their cell phones; even I dug out my smartphone. I called the Lady
Saffron, far up in First Class, but she didn’t answer. Jewel? She texted like a
demon.
Then the arrival bell rang.
Quick as a flash, Jewel hopped up and popped open a bin.
"I hate all this 9/11
nonsense,” she said, tugging at her jacket repeatedly, trying to pull it out
from beneath a heavy, ancient Samsonite someone had jammed in to the overhead
at the last minute. "I have to run all my gear through baggage claim—holy cow.”
I’d reached out over her head
and lifted the Samsonite out of the way so she could free her jacket. Jewel
glanced back at me and did a double take—even on large planes, I can usually
bump my forehead against the roof if I stand tippy-toe.
Cinnamon made a little yelp,
her tail apparently caught in a tangle of our unbuckled seatbelts. As I leaned
to help her, a man in the opposite side stood and opened the bin. Soon, the
aisle was filled with passengers unloading their bags, with Jewel two rows
ahead of us.
I started forward to get her
card or figure out how to continue the dragon discussion later, but irate
passengers in the row ahead of me hopped up, and Cinnamon tugged at me from
behind. With long arms, I scooped down our carry-ons while the row emptied.
When the logjam of passengers
in front of us had cleared, Jewel was gone.
We tromped off the plane,
wedged past impatient departees, passed rows of seats empty and full, and
sailed out into the terminal. All the airports I had visited since I started
the Council were starting to blur. All had the same blah décor—here, blue and
gray patterned carpet. All tried to spice it with airport art—here, a giant
driftwood horse. And all had an army of underpaid staff— here, Latinos and
Asians, picking up after us wasteful consumers destroying the atmosphere with
our travel.
Soon, I found the stairs to
the baggage claim area, where once again I was next to Jewel.
"Surprise, surprise,” Jewel
said, mouth quirking up a little.
"Fancy meeting you here,” I
said, pulling Cinnamon’s bag off the carousel.
"Fancy that,” Jewel replied.
A huge black bag, covered with stickers, thudded out of the conveyor and
slammed down onto the carousel, and she began wedging her way with a litany of
"excuse me’s.” The bag was passing too fast, so I reached in and pulled it out.
"Here you go,” I said. What wasit about this woman? I couldn’t resist trying to help her, trying to show off
for her. I tried to steel myself, to play cool, then I caught Jewel staring at
the muscles in my arms as I set the bag down. I flexed my bicep and said,
"Show’s for free.”
"Oh, God,” she said, putting
her hand to her forehead. "Sorry, thanks.”
"No need to be sorry,” I
said, "and anyway, ‘sorry’ is normally my line.”
"Who’s your new friend?”
asked an impish Southern belle voice from beside us, and I saw Jewel’s head
jerk aside to see the red-hair-black-dress- bonnet-and-bomber-goggles show
that was the Lady Saffron—my ex-girlfriend. She looked Jewel up and down. "Adorable.”
"I... I,”
Jewel said, eyes widening at Saffron, clearly not sure how to take her.
Saffron was a daywalker,
making few concessions to her vampirism beyond the goggles. The dark black
cloth made her red hair stand out like fire, but it exposed her face and
throat. Most people never guessed that she was the most powerful vampire in the
Southeast.
But you couldn’t miss her
entourage. Darkrose, Saffron’s consort, wore a dark, gray-hemmed velvet
traveling hood that cloaked her almost completely. Beside her stood Vickman,
her sharp-eyed, bearded bodyguard, quietly menacing in his black hat and bulky
coat. Collecting the bags was Schultze, Darkrose’s human servant, a tall,
swarthy, reserved man in an immaculate white suit with black patterned trim
that echoed Darkrose’s robe. For those in the know, a hooded figure with
matching attendant and hovering bodyguard just screamed "vampire.”
But I couldn’t tell if Jewel
could tell. She looked at Saffron’s imperious black dress and regal red hair
pouring out of her bonnet; then at the black leather catsuit beneath Darkrose’s
Sith traveling cloak, then back at me, eyes lingering on the steel collar that
symbolized I was under Saffron’s protection. Jewel raised an eyebrow; I
returned the favor. Perhaps this curly-haired granola girl was into more
devious forms of alternative culture than just magical firespinning.
Schultze leaned forward and
pulled another bag off the carousel. "The last bag, ma’am.”
"Thank you, Schultze,”
Darkrose said wearily. She was upright, but sagging to the point you could
barely see her dark features beneath the hood; unlike Saffron, she was not yet
a full daywalker and found the day not only dangerous but draining. "All we
await now is Nyissa.”
"Another of
your... friends?” Jewel asked, trying to subtly lift her head
to peer inside Darkrose’s cloak—not looking at her features, but at the collar
of her leather catsuit, barely visible beneath the hood of the cloak. "Is she
coming on another flight?”
"No, she came on this one
with us,” I said, smiling. I had been wondering how far we could push this
without actually mentioning the word "vampire,” and now, I guessed, was it—I
pointed at the traveling coffin coming out of the oversized baggage area. "Over
there.”
"Oh, no, I’m sosorry,” Jewel said, face falling. Damn it, I hadn’t intended to make her think
Nyissa was dead. But before I could explain, her phone buzzed and she
pulled it out. "Hey, my ride is here. Nice meeting you, Mohawk Lady.”
"Great meeting you, Granola
Girl,” I said.
And Jewel walked off, texting
into her phone. Far, far down the terminal, I saw a young, short muscular man
with spiky hair waving, and Jewel waved back. But rather than running to meet
him, she stopped, wavered, dug something out of her bag—and walked back to us.
"I’m sorry,” she said. "I
hate the whole ‘meet someone on the plane, have a nice conversation, then spoil
it by passing over a greasy business card’ thing. I hate it when some slimy old
businessman or lipstick lesbian does it to me. But after our conversation—”
And she handed over, not a
business card, but a little postcard, a glossy little flyer for "Fireweaver’s
Foray” at something called the Crucible. "We’re performing tonight,” she said,
"so this may be too last minute. But it really sounds like something you’d
enjoy.”
"Thanks,” I said, flipping it
over. It was in Oakland, which, according to the directions, was on the far
side of the San Francisco Bay. Huh—I always thought Oakland was a suburb of Los
Angeles. Who knew? "No promises. We have a full schedule, and I don’t know if
we can.”
Jewel smiled, and when she
did so her eyes seemed to sparkle. "Great! See you.”
And then she strode off,
texting into her phone as she went to join her friend.
"Did I not just say I
probably wouldn’t make it?” I asked, watching her go.
"With your words,” Darkrose
said, "but not your tone.”
"I heard it as ‘definitely
make it,’” Saffron said. "Very clearly ‘definitely’.”
"Mohawk and Granola sittin’
in a tree,” Cinnamon said—then hissed. The last time she’d used that phrase, it
had been "Cotie and Cally,” and Cally—Calaphase, my ex-boyfriend—wasn’t with us
anymore. "Sorry, Mom. That was mean.”
"S’okay,” I said, rubbing her
headscarf until it went crooked and she swatted at me. "Have to get over it
sometime.”
"And tonight’s a good night
to do it,” Saffron said. "We’re required to present ourselves to the Vampire
Court of San Francisco, but you’re not welcome in their territory until
invited—and I’m sorry, Cinnamon, that includes you too. You both wear my
collar.”
"I knew it,” Cinnamon said,
head snapping aside. "Nothing but trouble—”
"Cinnamon, you’re nevertrouble,” I fibbed. "Saffron, look... Doug and Jinx are
staying in San Francisco. Are you seriously telling me that they’re safer there
than we are because we’re wearing your collars? I thought these stupid
things guaranteed us protection—”
"In Atlanta,” Saffron
said. "But you’re not safe in San Francisco until we know that will be honored.
That’s not just for your protection; it’s for ours. You both wear my collar—so
to other vampires, you’re not just under my protection—you’re my minions.”
"I am not anybody’s
‘minion,’” I said.
"But they don’t know that,”
Darkrose said, raising her head, weary, but with an edge to her clipped South
African accent. "And one powerful vampire bringing a formidable werekin and a
very formidable witch into the territory of another could be considered an act
of war.”
"You can stay at the airport
hotel, or you can go have a night on the town,” Saffron said, folding her arms,
setting her chin, making the locks of red hair pouring out of her bonnet look
like the mane of a red lion. "But you can’t join us in San Francisco until
you’re cleared.”
"All right, fine, a
night on the town,” I said, rubbing Cinnamon’s headscarf. "Oakland looks like
it could be only, what, a thirty minute drive or so? Let’s catch some dinner,
then go see Jewel spin some fire. After all—wait for it—what’s the worst that
could happen?”
—g
"On
the streets of Oakland?” asked a sharp voice. "You could die, Dakota
Frost.”
